It's been awhile

Two of my fur babies, Huckleberry and Sparky

It's been awhile!

The last time I wrote here, it was 2015. 

Back in 2015, I had just escaped an abusive husband.

I had left a note on the kitchen table and disappeared while he was at work. I hopped on a plane from Pennsylvania and landed in sunny Florida. I can still remember how excited I was the minute I landed and saw all the palm trees and felt the warmth hugging me. 

My health improved by leaps and bounds. There were no more violent anger outbursts to look out for. My fight or flight system settled down. 

I was able to finally start living a softer, slower, gentler, more loving life, just like I had been visualizing and manifesting all along. Just like I saw myself living as I was listening to audios imagining a calm and loving environment. 

I was finally enjoying my life. 

I was LIVING!

I had moved in August, and after about a solid seven months, by about March, I was enjoying pretty good health, too. 

I was able to go out on drives as a passenger and actually eat without feeling sick in the car, something I couldn't do in Pennsylvania before I moved.   

I was able to go out kayaking in beautiful warm weather in the winter in Tampa and para sailing at the beach in the summer.

I was walking our two dogs Sparky and Sadie twice a day in the beautiful Floridian weather. 

I met locals and neighbors on our walks, made friends, connections. 

I got to experience a genuine and comfortable family life with the family I was living with at the time.

I went on long walks an hour or 2 by myself almost every day, or every other day.

I hiked on trails in the woods right behind where I lived, in cities, towns, anywhere and everywhere I happened to be at the time.  

I was able to eat any kinds of food I wanted, and was even able to stop eating gluten free. I just happened to eat vegetarian for 3 years, even though I'm not vegetarian now. I ate high protein because I walked and hiked so much. 

Movement was freedom, and it was my liberation.

I was in a very peaceful, soothing environment, and it allowed me to thrive.

After 2 years, I was even able to start driving on my own again. 

After three years of feeling great, I decided I wanted to start working again. 

I thought about starting small and getting into animal rescue, starting at the animal rescue near where I lived. 

But I missed the orientation.

I had also put in applications at a few elementary schools in the area, and was surprised to get a call back from one of them.

Could you start in two days, they asked?

Could I, I asked myself?

Of course I could! 

I was overjoyed to be back in the world of working people, after being out of commission for 8 whole years. 

Every little thing felt like an honor. 

Until it wasn't. 

I quickly became overwhelmed. By Thanksgiving, I knew I was in over my head. But I swore I could make it by Christmas. I was not a quitter. I didn't want to let the kids down. 

Christmas break revived me, but by the third day teaching after break, I was exhausted again. But somehow, I dragged myself in day after day. Just like I did when I taught in NYC.

Because at this point, I had broken up with the only person I had known in Florida several months ago, and I was alone in the world. 

I had no family again, just like when I was in NYC.

So I figured that I literally HAD to keep going. 

So I did. Until the end of the school year in June. 

At which time I crashed, and then slept for weeks at a time. I slept two days at a time, woke at night and drove the city, crying, then slept a day and half, all summer. I barely had any energy. 

That fall I flew to the west coast in a serendipitous move that changed my life.

That's where I am now. 

I'm living in the Pacific North West, in Southern Oregon.

In the middle of the woods in a tiny cabin where my world has since been flipped upside down.

Tiny house in the woods where I live now. 

Everything I thought I knew since I was in my beautiful state of healing in Florida has been shaken to the core. 

I healed completely from adrenal fatigue in Florida, yes.

But I got it back again by overworking myself for a solid year. 

In the last five years since then, I have healed from adrenal fatigue, again. But to a degree, that is. 

I have that discovered adrenal fatigue is not the only thing that I have been dealing with. 

Adrenal fatigue has been the tip of the ice burg, I guess. It has been an indicator that there are other issues deeper at the core... and one of those issues has been childhood trauma which has been buried in amnesia. 

This amnesia has been something I haven't written about yet on this blog yet, and it has been waiting oh so patiently for me until I was ready for it to unfold itself.

But because it involves terrifying memories, the amnesia in its deep wisdom was waiting until I felt extremely safe, extremely loved, and extremely secure. 

And that is something that I have felt over the last 5 years on a steady basis for the first time in my life with my current partner and his family.

But now that those traumatic memories are a reality, I am truly terrified to be living in my brain just trying to sort it all on a daily basis. I understand completely why my young little subconscious brain blocked it all out 100% without knowing it was doing so. I could not have lived otherwise. 

I barely feel like living now as an adult, simply remembering it. I can barely cope now.

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't been ready.

Sometimes I wish that I could have stayed in sunny Florida, living forever in perpetual ignorance of what was about to be revealed. Eating oranges straight off the tree in the back yard, walking in the sunshine, basking in the warmth of the earth as I lay in the grass every morning. 

Sometimes I wish that I hadn't been brave. 

Why, oh why do they think that it's so great to be brave?

I guess because it's worth it. 

It's just that, on those tough days, when you can't see the light, and forget, you need friends to remind you that it's ok to have tough days, and not have all the answers.

Which is why I write in this blog.

I don't have all the answers. 

But I know it's worth it.

Especially on the days when I feel like I wish I had never remembered.

There is a silver lining, though. In remembering the trauma, I was given a gift. I was given replays of exactly what happened that caused my core health issues in the first place. Although I thought it was "just" adrenal fatigue, and then when that didn't go away fast enough, I thought it was chronic fatigue. 

But no, it was an untreated Traumatic Brain Injury sustained when I was 5, which I had no memory of until recently. And I believe a lot of my health issues stem from complications from that TBI. And that adrenal fatigue and chronic fatigue are the tip of the ice burg on top of them. 

I'm grateful for this actual knowledge that the amnesia DID provide, as far as allowing me to remember the TBI. It will help me in the physical side of healing. Finally, doctors will be able to figure out how to help me neurologically, something I never looked at before.  

My physical health, which has always been so puzzling, is finally going to get answers and real direction.  

And although my heart still feels sad and wishes it didn't have to go through this phase of remembering and processing the trauma, I do realize that it is a healing phase and that eventually I will be grateful that I was brave enough to go through it. 

I remind myself daily that I will be ever so much lighter on the other side of healing than I ever was when I was in that state of bliss in Florida when I didn't even know there was such a thing as amnesia looming on the horizon for me. And I was extremely blissy then! So I guess I will be extremely light after I am done processing everything that I repressed through amnesia. 

That is definitely something to look forward to! 

Q: Is there anything you've ever remembered that you wish you hadn't? Were there any silver linings?